Cloudflare CEO: Google now returns 1 visitor per 40 crawled pages as AI breaks the web's deal
机器之心 · wechat · 2026-09-12
In a Disruptor Confessions interview, Cloudflare co-founder and CEO Matthew Prince argues AI answer engines are breaking the internet's 30-year implicit Give/Get contract: Google once returned 1 visitor per 2 crawled pages, now it's 1 per 40 — ChatGPT is 3000:1 and Anthropic 100000:1. Since agents don't click ads, publishers face 20x harder monetization.
Prince says the damage extends beyond commercial media to nonprofit creators like Wikipedia volunteers, whose content is distilled with almost no traffic returning. He also contends the ad-driven model itself is ending — traffic never equaled quality and fueled rage bait. On Agent Commerce, he covers AI's early stage as a research assistant moving toward autonomous transactions, how rational agent rankings strip small businesses of serendipitous human advantages, and how Pay Per Crawl and M2M micropayments strain existing financial settlement systems.
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